A windows 7 question

[Grant]

problem solved
he is moving to mac, taking my old machine

somehow while erasing a rewritable dvd, windows lost the dvd drive - fark me . . .


my god, i remember one of my reasons to move all those years back - frustration !
download this driver, download that driver, upgrade ram - re-activate windows, update after update after update - endless

Having said all that of windows, there are 2 areas where Mac falls flat:
1) No system recovery
2) Library folder.

The library folder on mac is very similar to "registry" on windows.
Screw up in there and a world of pain awaits.
The name "library" is somewhat inviting - many friends using one of my macs stumble upon the library folder - assuming music, movies etc, to be in there.
Way to easy to get to!!

 

[Grant]

The install disk has a deferent OA2 signature file which doesn't match the OA2 SLIC in the firmware (Pinnacle vs HP). I'm sure a bit of search engine fu can tell you how to replace the file and activate. Look the at the ACPI tables and check if there is a MSDM table populated with a key (OEMs sold a lot of Win8/10 machines with downgrade rights or Win7 preinstalled but licensed for the newer OS).

Back in the day, from what I remember, the Dell signatures were the first to leak for Win7 (I think a month after official launch), but the collection of signatures quickly grew (plug a USB into the retail demo machines, run a script, grab certain files and OEM key via script).

OA1 and OA2 where relatively easy to activate/pirate, hence Win8+ moved to OA3 where every OEM gave every machine's firmware a unique signature in a new firmware table (MSDM; essentially the actual unique 5x5 product key) and insisted that every machine activates online by the end user (OA1 and 2 were factory pre-activated).

Kind of you to give them a Mac. The old machine may be a winner with one of the popular Linux distros (perhaps XFCE/LXDE).

I went sailing the high seas and download some scripts and patches.
The windows machine is no longer screaming about "non genuine windows" anymore.
Security guard is ecstatic with the Mac - blisteringly fast by comparison, and he took to the Mac os like a duck to water.

Never again!!

 

[Koos Custodiet]

There are tools to fix that. Ask if you can't figure it out.

Also, do NOT install KB971033.

Feel free to contact me on a side channel if you have as big an aversion to Windows > 7 as I have.

 

[gregmcc]

telephonic usually for the Win7 works to this day

Not for long:

https://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsoft-quietly-kills-official-way-to-activate-windows-1110-without-internet/

 

[Grant]

There are tools to fix that. Ask if you can't figure it out.

Also, do NOT install KB971033.

Feel free to contact me on a side channel if you have as big an aversion to Windows > 7 as I have.

Already moved on to Mac.

 

[Totempole]

thanks ppl.
i've been using mac for about 15yrs now - so not that familiar with windows os any longer.
turns out i did install using the wrong (proline) dvd - found the hp disks.

the machine has:
Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz
4GB RAM
500GB SATA Hard Drive

which would be the better os for this spec machine: win7, win8, win10 ?
(the guy uses it for basic stuff, browsing, mail & youtube

Windows 10 would be the clear winner here, but it needs an SSD for a decent experience. I've put together a similar machine for someone. T8300 4GB RAM and a 240GB SSD. It's able to run Office 365 Apps fairly well.

They mostly use Outlook, Word and Excel for reading Attachments. Adobe is pretty slow, but Foxit PDF viewer is way faster. It can even do Youtube in a pinch at 360p.

If the one you have has NVidia or ATI Graphics instead of Intel Onboard, You might even be able to stream Youtube at up to 720p.

Again, the key here is an SSD. ANY SSD will do fine, but with an HDD it's going to be painful.

 

[Grant]

Windows 10 would be the clear winner here, but it needs an SSD for a decent experience. I've put together a similar machine for someone. T8300 4GB RAM and a 240GB SSD. It's able to run Office 365 Apps fairly well.

They mostly use Outlook, Word and Excel for reading Attachments. Adobe is pretty slow, but Foxit PDF viewer is way faster. It can even do Youtube in a pinch at 360p.

If the one you have has NVidia or ATI Graphics instead of Intel Onboard, You might even be able to stream Youtube at up to 720p.

Again, the key here is an SSD. ANY SSD will do fine, but with an HDD it's going to be painful.

So I sometimes can be a little ocd when it comes to unfinished tasks, or giving up on something - it's in my nature to relentless persist until I'm satisfied.

The guy has the Mac and is over the moon with it.
In the interim, the hp machine continued to stare at me.
Landed up installing win10 on it - it's running happily.
Was contemplating installing an ssd drive - but pointless as the machine is unlikely to see much further use